Dolly Baker hates "rehearsing." She doesn't
like to plan something in detail before a stage with an accompanist.
She regards that "improvisation "is the most important thing
to play jazz.

In another word, "Jazz is alive." She
can't sing in her own way without the musicians that can keep up with
her. I believe there are many players in Japan to be accepted also
in the United States, but how about vocalists?

Dead songs never taste good like rotten sashimi, of course. I'd like
to listen to and sing the fresh and living songs. "Hello Dolly"
is the opening song for Dolly. Such like this;

"Hello is my first name, the second name is Dolly."

You know, "Hello Dolly" performed by Satchmo had a great
hit.

Dolly has been in Japan for more
than thirty years, but she doesn't speak Japanese at all. Maybe it's
because people talk to her only in English. Norio Maeda, the leading
person as a pianist and an arranger at the same time, doesn't like to
accompany singers on the piano, but he likes to play for Dolly. That's
why he can swing himself on the stage with her. I guess he can't stand
to play the piano for the singers to sing only dead songs.

Dolly released a great CD "We 3+Dolly
Baker" (Denon) with Norio Maeda, Yasuo Arakawa and Takeshi Inomata
in 1998. The former CD "All Waves" (Sony Record) had a hit
to sell more than 45,000. It's amazing to sell chic jazz CDs more
than 40 thousand in Japan, but that damned record company canceled
making it!! Even though, she had a seventy-seventh birthday party
in 1999; a special one in Japan called "kijyu."

Dolly's new album "King of Jazz" （Columbia)
has been released in May, 1999.
She performed with Norio Maeda again.

(15) Dolly's Episode about Sinatra

Frank
Sinatra in 1943

Dolly told me this story on way back from the jazz
festival held in Yugawara three months later after Sinatra passed away.

In 1943 during the World War II, Sinatra
was on the stage at Copa Cabana in NY He was drinking behind the bar
counter alone. Dolly wanted to talk to him, but she was too young
to do so. She ordered a drink to a bartender:

"The same one as him for me."

Frank looked up and said to the bartender:
"Give her a kid's drink."

Dolly
Baker in early days

Dolly must have been so pretty. As you see the
pictures below, her smiling face never changes!!

(16) Singer's Mental Attitude

Dolly told me that she never has any foods or alcohol
three hours before stages. Of course she never smokes. Maybe these are
the reasons why she can continue to be a wonderful singer even though
she is seventy-eight years old and has been wounded all over her body
to have an operation to put a pacemaker in summer in 1998.

After that she said like this: "Even if I die, my heart is still alive!!"